Grossed out

There was a woman on the train today that was picking her nose. "Picking" is the wrong word. She ought to have called PG&E to find out if there were any buried cables or gas lines in there. She was facing me with her head against the glass and her eyes closed, with her finger in her nostril, rotating it around like a radar, searching for something to pull out. I thought about saying to her something my dad would say; something like, "pick me a winner," or, "that's about as funny as a terd in a punch bowl," but I didn't. Instead, I pulled out "The Sound and the Fury" and held it up higher than normal so I couldn't see her. But I couldn't read. I kept moving the book over just enough to see if she was still doing it. She'd stop for a minute but then her finger would get sucked right back like it was pulled by a magnet or as if her nose was a giant Hoover or a wet/dry shop vac like the one my dad has in his garage that always falls over if you pull it by the hose. Still holding my book, I remembered a Shel Silverstein poem about a creature inside noses that bites off fingers. I was six when my mom read that to me and I was 10 when I stopped believing it was true. I wished her mom had read that poem to her when she was a kid. The squealing brakes on the train woke her up and I looked back at my book as she left her seat and got off the train. Even after she was gone I still couldn't read, and suddenly I felt my nose begin to itch....